Welcome back to the Chucklefish crew after the holiday! The new years updates were fun to read - made me happy. The textures of planets (as seen from your ship or orbiting your hunting grounds) have been bugging me slightly and up until recently I haven't been able to put my finger on the annoyance. At first I was certain that it was just gas giants that were the problem, as they are all the same... and uniformly more dull than the ones we have seen in our own solar system, but when I was poking around in nightly I realized that many of the planets share textures to a fault. I propose that more textures and skins be added to the pre-existing ones so that the variety of what we see is pleasing to the eye. Give a random selection of planets rings, thick cloudy featureless faces, actual seas with only dots for islands, or other things to break up the monotony of seeing basically the same pattern filled in with different colours on different planets. Especially now that we have statistics on the weather and environments on the planet, the visible atmosphere doesn't have to directly indicate what we would be landing in. Take Venus for example. In conclusion I think that there should be three visual levels to planets and moons - those that are actively attractive with rings or beautiful features, those that are the same as the planets appear now, and those that are more simple, coloured cloudy discs that hide their true terrain. The variety would make for a better experience, and more simple looking moons would be a very easy way of improving the viewing aesthetic of the existing textures and any that had more features added. A relatively simple skin job could add a lot to the depth and enjoyment of the universe - please consider the idea.
I also think this is a good idea. The space navigation window is a large part of the player experience, even if it is a minor part of the game. And the planets that are in the background view are also a large part, because they are almost always visible.
Not only are the background planets always visible, but for me I love the feeling of looking up into the sky and saying to myself, "I wanna go there". This is the reason I fell in love with Starbound - for the sheer wanderlust potential. I want the sky to be enticing so that when we look up other people can have that feeling of wanting to see what's over the next horizon.
Yes! One thing I miss form the current Stable version is that the planets looked like anything, though I feel it'd be cool to have more than one type of look for planet types. Ice and Volcanic worlds would be more of a challenge to generate additional textures for, since Arctic worlds is always very light blue if not white because of Snow and Ice, while Volcanic Worlds are red and brown/black because of Lava and igneous Rock. Also I feel the same as you guys with the wonderlust feelings I get when I look at the sky and see the other worlds in the system.
Thanks I hope enough people agree with us that someone takes notice. It would make me downright giddy to see textures in game and know I had helped a game I like become better.
